Today's Inspirational Message
by dreamingmarie
Summary: Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. Khalil Gibran .


**Author's Note:**_ Veronica Mars, Veronica/Logan, Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.(Khalil Gibran)._ Prompt left by onceuponapillow on comment_fic (.com/comment_fic/).

**Disclaimer:** The characters were created by Rob Thomas and remain the property of Thomas, the CW, and Warner Bros. Television. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

"Hi, you've reached Logan with today's inspirational message: Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. Khalil Gibran."

Hours later, Veronica was still annoyed by the outgoing message on Logan's cellphone. _Strongest soul my ass_, she thought as she was driving to the Neptune Grand. She was already in a bad mood, and Logan's quote-of-the-day made it even worse. The smug, ironic tone with which he always recited it made her feel positively homicidal.

She couldn't very well get mad at Logan for asking her to retrieve Dick's bag from the Sheriff's Department. Veronica and Dick had good reason to hate each other. They'd each had a defining hand in destroying the other one's life: Dick had spiked a drink with GHB that ended up in her hand and had proceeded to feed her more alcohol and egg his brother on to rape her. She, in retaliation (it felt too good at the time for her to fool herself that it was anything else), had sicced the SEC on his father. With one phone call, she'd blown over the house of cards that was at the core of Dick's identity.

She'd often wondered, this summer, what would happen if she gave Logan any of that information. Ever since Dick's father had returned from the Caymans Islands to face justice, Dick had crumbled. Logan had done his best to keep him alive and out of trouble, but it hadn't been easy.

"I'm just glad he doesn't know what his brother did to you. It would kill him," he told Veronica once.

She raised her eyebrows, but she didn't say anything. Logan had a tendency to gloss over Dick's less honourable qualities, just like he had glossed over Lilly's. She had no doubt that, if she told him the truth about Shelly Pomroy's party, he and Dick would be done, and it would probably be the end of Richard Casablancas Jr.

But what would happen if she told him who had called the SEC with that anonymous tip? The only thing he knew about her involvement with the Casablancas family was that she'd been hired to find out if Kendall was cheating on her husband (she was, but not with the county assessor, as Veronica had first thought). Would Logan still want to know _Veronica_ if he knew what she'd done? What would happen to her without Logan? What would happen to him without Dick and her, for that matter?

So, maybe, what Logan didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and for better or for worse, Dick and Veronica were both Logan's crutches and Logan was theirs. They had no other choice but to tolerate each other, and when Logan called to tell her that Dick had been arrested for public drunkenness and that he had drugs in his bag, Veronica had sighed and gotten to work.

She let herself in the suite and dumped the bag on the coffee table.

"There you go," she said to Logan, blocking his view of the TV. "One roommate saved."

"Thanks," he answered, sounding relieved.

"You're welcome."

There was nothing more she could say on the subject, but the need to rant and rave at Logan about _something_ was just too strong to ignore.

"When are you going to stop that stupid message-of-the-day crap?" she blurted out.

Logan looked puzzled. "Why, what's wrong with it?"

"It's driving me nuts, that's what!" she said, angry and gesticulating wildly. "Do you really think you're fooling anyone that you actually know these quotes and that you don't spend every morning trolling quotationspage dot com?"

"Damn!" said Logan. "Here I was hoping people would think I hired someone to troll for me every morning."

"Who the Hell is Khalil Gibran, anyway?"

"Poet? Artist? Philosopher? All three at once?" said Logan. "Why do you even care? I've been doing it for years, and _now_ you decide you don't like it?"

"I've never liked it," said Veronica waspishly. "And see, you don't even know who the guy is."

"Oh yeah?" said Logan. He suddenly had that glint in his eyes and a smirk that meant nothing good. "Maybe I even own some of his artwork…"

"Don't give me that crap!"

Logan stood up and walked towards the window.

"Jeez, Veronica, why are you being such a bitch?"

"I'm not being a bitch! I just think that instead of wasting your time with just bite-sized quotes, you could read an actual book for once."

Logan rolled his eyes and then seemed to come to a decision.

"Remember that painting of my Mom's that you liked so much? The one with the woman in front of a rock, with her eyes closed and two fingers on her lips?"

"Yeah," answered Veronica. "Why?"

"That was a painting called _The Silence_ by… Khalil Gibran," he said with a flourish. "Arab-American poet, painter and philosopher of the beginning of the twentieth century, most famous work _The Prophet_, which, incidentally, I read," he recited, giving her an angry look.

For a moment, Veronica was speechless.

"I didn't know that," she finally said.

There was a pregnant pause during which Logan was clearly waiting for an apology and Veronica decided that he wasn't getting one when she'd just saved Dick's ass for him.

"So what happened to the painting?" she asked.

"It survived," said Logan casually, looking out of the window. "It's in storage."

"Storage? That's a pity. It's a nice painting."

"I'll hang it up again when I get my own place," he said with a shrug.

He seemed sad and deflated, suddenly. Without thinking, Veronica crossed the space between them and took him in her arms. He rested his cheek on top of her head, and for a moment they just stood there in silence, he taking in the scent of her hair, and she listening to his heartbeat against his chest.

"I went to see Dick in his cell after I was done," she finally said. "They said they would call you as soon as he wakes up. You'll have to nanny him a bit. Apparently he partied really hard last night."

"Just the usual, then," Logan said with a sigh. "I might as well declare my major in nursing right now."

Veronica snorted.

"Hey, I was going to order some lunch," he said, reaching for the room service menu. "Want something?"

"Yeah, that would be nice, thanks."

"You just saved my BFF from sharing a cell with Fisty McRapesalot," he said, smiling as he mentioned his own prison-related bogeyman. "It's the least I can do."

Veronica hung her head, a wry smile on her lips. "Sorry for freaking out over your voicemail," she said. "It's just… rescuing Dick puts me in a bad mood."

Logan pulled her towards him again and kissed the top of her head. They both knew that it wasn't really Dick she was upset about, but the nerve-wrecking possibility of her father being indicted for destroying evidence from her breaking into the Kane house. Their year of respite was over, and they had gone straight into drama and anguish again. They didn't have the luxury anymore of getting upset over who slept with whom while they were broken up, or who was spying on whom while they were together. And maybe, if there ever was a next time of calm, they would spend it a little less stupidly, licking their wounds and healing instead of looking for trouble, enjoying themselves and each other instead of finding things to fight about. Maybe they could be a little wiser.

"It's okay," Logan said. "He's just upset, you know, with his dad going to jail. He'll get better."

"Mmhmm," opined Veronica.

"Burger with fries and ketchup, that okay with you?" he asked, looking at her face and pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"Yeah."

"Burger with fries and ketchup it is."


End file.
